The American Planning Association just celebrated its 100th annual national conference in Las Vegas. With over 6,000 attending the conference, planning is obviously alive and well in the U.S. — and zoning is still at the heart of the action. I just returned from the conference and noted that one of the featured tracks was “Zoning, Codes, and Ordinances”. This year APA featured 17 sessions on zoning-related topics.

The sheer number of zoning-related discussions at APA and the topics of those sessions underscore the first lesson I identify in Chapter 6 of A Better Way to Zone — Euclidean zoning is both very durable and clearly flawed. While we continue to try to fix zoning in myriad ways, most of those fixes assume that the basic structure will remain in place. APA’s discussions addressed zoning from three directions

The first group of sessions fed our continuing interest in Euclidean hybrid zoning and its history.

• “An Instruction Manual for Advanced Regulatory Drafting” aimed at building mastery of the current system.

• “A Conversation with Richard Babcock” highlighted the career of a master land use lawyer best known for his book The Zoning Game and its analysis of how zoning really works.

• A second set of topics related directly to the Ten Principles outlined in Chapter 7 of A Better Way to Zone.

• “Market-Tested Zoning Tools for Mixed Use” was all about The Mixed Use Middle.

• “Controlling Large Houses” reflected our growing interest in Attainable Housing and communities that support it

• “New Zoning Techniques Using GIS” reinforced the need for Better Webbing

Finally, a third set of discussions focused on the increasing use of zoning as a tool to promote environmental sustainability – the latest chapter in how we mold the robust framework of Euclidean hybrid zoning to meet new challenges.

• “Saving the World through Zoning” outlined a model sustainable land use code under development by the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute in Denver.

• “Integrating Planning and Ecosystem Science” discussed exactly that.

• “Permitting and Standards for Wind Power” addressed the increasing overlaps between zoning and alternative energy sources.

In 2008, APA is celebrating 100 years of conferences, and the landmark New York City zoning ordinance turns 92. For almost a century planners have looked at zoning to do the heavy lifting in American land use regulation – and there is every reason to believe that will continue.